ORONO – A poll by three University of Maine social work graduate students concludes that more than 60 percent of respondents in Greater Bangor favor gay marriage and some 30 percent are opposed.

That’s a near flip-flop of recent national polling, showing 60 percent of Americans opposed.

Those who designed the UM survey said this week it has a sampling error of 5 percent.

And it was a relatively small sampling: Of the more than 500 random calls made by the graduate students, 115 of those who answered agreed to participate in the survey.

The three-student research group worked under the direction of Winston Turner, a UM social work professor who specializes in health policy research.

They found that of 115 respondents surveyed by telephone, 63 percent felt that gay marriage should be allowed in Maine.

“I was quite surprised,” said T. Ellen Sharp, one of the graduate students who prepared and conducted the survey. “Quite frankly I had expected a much more conservative result than we got.”

The survey results contrast sharply with nationwide polling conducted earlier this month by CNN/USA Today and the Gallup Organization. That survey of 1,000 adults found that 55 percent of those polled felt that marriage between homosexuals should not be legalized, while 42 percent said it should.

Pollsters acknowledged that attitudes on gay marriage have changed dramatically, however. The 42 percent favorable finding was the highest level of support for gay marriage since Gallup began asking the question in 1996 and represented an increase from 33 percent when the question was posed in March.

Working with Sharp on the telephone survey were graduate students Veronica Wolf Eagle and Lucas Malo. The students began preparing the questions in September 2003 and conducted their telephone polling during February and March.

“Our impetus was to find out how people in this area felt,” Sharp said Thursday. “We felt this was a hot issue.” She added that when the Rand Corp., a California-based think tank, conducted a similar poll in the Portland area last year, support for gay marriage was recorded at levels comparable to those in Bangor.

Of the 115 respondents, 65 percent of the sampling was drawn from the Bangor area, while 34.8 percent was from the university community.

The survey consisted of 40 questions and required about 10 minutes for respondents to answer. Sharp indicated that in order to ensure consistency in the survey, questions addressing the issue of gay marriage were asked twice during the calls.

Both questions were framed in the negative as a method of detecting bias from the respondent, the researchers said. Most of those who answered the questions agreed that gay marriage should be allowed in Maine.

In response to initial question, “Do you think homosexuality should prevent someone from being able to get married?” 69 percent answered no, 19.1 percent answered yes and 11 percent said they were unsure.

In the second part of the survey, statements were read to respondents and they were then asked whether they strongly agreed or strongly disagreed. In response to the statement, “Same-sex marriage should not be allowed in Maine,” 62.6 percent said they disagreed or strongly disagreed, while 29.6 percent answered they agreed or strongly agreed. Those responses indicated a “strong trend” toward favoring gay marriage, Sharp noted.

When the researchers compared a subgroup of UM students to the general Bangor population, they found the university students to be slightly more accepting of gay couples. The students also were slightly more in favor of gay marriage than the general population.

The survey found that respondents over age 65 tended to be less in favor of gay marriage in Maine. The oldest respondent surveyed was 95, the youngest 18.

“As people grew older and older, they tended to be more opposed,” Sharp said. “And when you bring in religion, people follow along the lines of seeing marriage as a religious institution rather than a civil institution.”

The graduate students also surveyed other attitudes about marriage and family and found strongly defined feelings about racial equity in marriage and equal rights for gays regarding employment opportunities.

Of the sample contacted, 93.9 percent said racial heritage should not be a factor when getting married, 4.3 percent were opposed to racial mixing in marriage, and 1.7 percent were unsure.

On the issue of employment opportunities for homosexuals, 93.9 percent agreed that homosexuals should be afforded equal opportunity, 3.5 percent were opposed to equal access, and 2.6 percent were uncertain.

The survey also replicated questions regarding community perceptions of lesbians as opposed to gay men from a study conducted in California by Gregory Herek and found that the respondents were more accepting of lesbians than gay male couples overall. That result was consistent with Herek’s findings, they said.